Abstract
While studies of human color vision have made enormous strides, an overarching rationale for the circular sense of color relationships generated by two classes of color opponent neurons and three cone types is still lacking. Here we suggest that color circularity, color opponency and trichromacy may have arisen, at least in part, because of the geometrical requirements needed to unambiguously distinguish all possible spectrally different regions on a plane.
Highlights
Using sensory information to distinguish image regions that promote apt behavior in the physical world is generally assumed to be the broad purpose of animal vision
The purpose of the present article is to examine whether perceptual color circularity, color geometrical requirement to color vision is that at least four perceived color classes would be needed opponency and physiological trichromacy could be related consequences of a need to meet these to resolve the same cartographic concern in the retinal images [17]
The argument we have presented suggests that color circularity, color opponency, and
Summary
Using sensory information to distinguish image regions that promote apt behavior in the physical world is generally assumed to be the broad purpose of animal vision. Whereas achromatic vision distinguishes regions on the basis of light intensity (luminance), color vision further distinguishes equiluminant regions on the basis of differences in the distribution of spectral energy, giving animals with this ability a behavioral advantage in dealing with objects and conditions in the world [1,2,3]. A puzzle since Newton’s pioneering studies is why when asked to arrange objects with a full range of spectral qualities (e.g., Munsell chips) such that their apparent colors are minimally different, the result is a closed continuum (Figure 1) [4,5]. While it has long been known that color vision is mediated by the spectral sensitivities of short, medium, and long-wavelength cones whose output is processed by red-green and blue yellow opponent neurons [7,8,10,11,12], why these particular properties have evolved in humans is incompletely understood [7,11,13]
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